Against All Odds (1984)

March 2, 1984

SCREEN: 'AGAINST ALL ODDS'

By Janet Maslin

Published: March 2, 1984

THERE is plenty of evidence to support the idea that ''film noir,'' the late 1940's genre marked by shadow and duplicity, cannot successfully be updated for the 80's. There is also reason to wonder why the task would even be attempted, since modern characters who deliver the genre's dated dialogue or espouse its notions of evil can't help but seem mannered and false. Despite all that, Taylor Hackford's ''noir''-ish ''Against All Odds'' has a lot of appeal. If Mr. Hackford has done nothing more than make a steamy, sinister, great-looking detective film cum travelogue, he's still managed to come up with something fast-paced and eminently entertaining.

''Against All Odds,'' which is based on Jacques Tourneur's 1947 ''Out of the Past'' and opens today at Loews State and other theaters, has a dazzling beginning, even if its plot, as
noir
plots do, finally gets somewhat out of hand. A handsome football player, abruptly cut from his Los Angeles team, is dispatched to the Yucatan, hired to find a beautiful runaway heiress. As played by Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward, this stunningly photogenic duo shares a voluptuous tropical idyll, one that ultimately leads them to treachery and murder.

There is, of course, a lot more to it than that; Mr. Hackford has populated the film with colorful supporting characters and intertwined them in a plot involving professional sports, gambling, real estate, and blackmail. That the plot machinations are intelligible at all is largely a tribute to the supporting performers, many of whom - Richard Widmark, Alex Karras, Jane Greer, Saul Rubinek, Dorian Harewood and especially Swoosie Kurtz - make far sharper, more vivid impressions here than the brevity of their roles would seem to allow.

Mr. Bridges's naturalness as the good-hearted football player Terry Brogan is one of the chief things that make the movie likable. For all the skepticism that Eric Hughes's screenplay allows him, Mr. Bridges seems trusting and unsuspicious enough, in the middle of all other double-dealers and two-timers in this story, to invite a good deal of empathy; he does a particularly fine job with one confessional monlogue about his football career. Mr. Bridges is unexpectedly well suited to this romantic fall-guy role, and he's effectively contrasted with James Woods, as a sleekly reptilian Hollywood entrepreneur.

Mr. Woods may not be hugely credible as the spurned lover who hires Mr. Bridges to find Miss Ward, but the rivalry between the two men sets off plenty of sparks. The hair-raising car chase that introduces and defines their relationship is no means the most tension-filled of their encounters.

Miss Ward is suitably sexy as the runaway heiress, but hers is an awkward role. She's certainly beautiful enough to lend credibility to the two men's fierce rivalry over her favors, but she doesn't seem complex enough to be the treacherous she-devil this material requires. Mr. Hughes, unlike Daniel Mainwaring (who wrote ''Out of the Past'') hasn't drawn the character quite that way; Miss Ward's Jessie is meant to be more mixed-up than wicked, or at least that's the way she sounds. But the depths of evil into which everyone presumably plunges require more than mere carelessness or irresponsibility from the story's temptress.

In fact, the corruption at the heart of the film doesn't count for much, either; it isn't startling enough to make the denouement work, nor is Mr. Hackford very helpful in his unsporting reluctance to adhere to
film noir
tradition and kill off virtually everybody. No matter. ''Against All Odds'' is so lively and enjoyable on its own terms that its genre problems, while real, are easily overlooked. Mr. Hackford's brand of glossy, romantic escapism doesn't have to work as an homage. It has a vitality of its own. Janet Maslin